Monday 26 July 2010 19.01 EDT
First published on Monday 26 July 2010 19.01 EDT

Dawn raids on asylum families facing deportation have become "the norm", with no evidence that the authorities actually consider whether they are necessary, according to a report published today by the independent chief inspector scrutinising the UK Border Agency.

John Vine says that his investigation of 42 deportation cases found that the majority of arrests of families by UKBA were carried out between 6.30am and 6.40am.

The chief inspector is sharply critical of this practice of using dawn raids and rejects explanations from immigration staff that this is the "optimum time" to find a family together before children go to school and to minimise any community reaction.

"Although we found awareness that the time of the arrest could be tailored to each family's circumstances, there was no evidence that this was happening in practice," says Vine.

He says he recognises that arresting families is an unpleasant experience at any time of day, with a potential negative impact on children in particular.

"On the evidence it appears that early morning arrests have become the 'norm' with little, if any, consideration to arrest at different times. While there is never going to be an optimum time to arrest a family at their home, we were concerned that there was no individual approach to the timing of the arrest of each family given their particular circumstances. For example, an arrest involving a parent with a child below school age could feasibly take place later in the day," says Vine's report.

He says alternative arrangements have been made in Glasgow to enable families to be arrested later in the day at reporting centres, but the practice has not been adopted in England and Wales.

The report also reveals that many families are given less than 45 minutes to pack all their belongings, including clothes, medication and children's toys, before being taken to a detention centre to await removal. One raid even took place before 6.20am, the report found.

Vine says there is a danger that as little as 30 minutes is becoming the "default position" to allow a family to pack.

Vine says that it is unacceptable that UKBA has no system in place to publish information on families subject to removal and those who are detained. He says that UKBA management information shows that 1,168 children left detention in 2008-09, of which 539 were deported from Britain and 629 released. He says there is very limited evidence of any individual action plan existing for each family who were arrested that took account of their welfare needs or arrangements to return home.

In a separate report, Vine is also highly critical of the way the UKBA visa section deals with settlement applications from Pakistan, saying very few verification checks appear to be carried out to curb fraud and a very poor service is on offer to those who apply. His report finds a significant number of the sampled cases not being decided correctly.

"In some cases it was almost impossible to determine why visas had been issued, when others had been refused on identical or very similar evidence. In the worst cases, we found that visas that should have been refused were granted and visas that should have been granted were refused," says Vine.

The reports are published after the high court ruled yesterday that UKBA was acting unlawfully in giving "little or no notice" to those facing a "fast-track" removal process. The judges said the practice amounted to a denial of access to justice. Those facing deportation are generally given 72 hours' notice of removal but immigration officers were using the now unlawful "exceptional practice" to swoop late at night and escort people to flights leaving only a few hours later.

• This article was amended on 27 July 2010. Due to an editing change, the original referred to John Vine as the chief inspector of UKBA. This has been corrected, as has a sub-heading referring to him as "immigration chief".